The episode of your cartoon series is over already, and the kids haven't yet had An Aesop or a science lesson? Well, we can't have that!

This trope is the practice of encapsulating the moral of the story in The Tag. It often has No Fourth Wall, and has the characters of the show directly lecture to the audience. It allows a show that went 22 minutes wantonly breaking stuff to get that coveted "E/I" rating, by telling the kids not to eat the pretty candies in the medicine cabinet. Most times, the moral laid out in The Tag is a summation of what should have been learned from the story, encapsulated in an Anvilicious manner. Other times, it's just a generic safety tip added to an otherwise purely entertaining episode.

A type of Public Service Announcement or PSA, which often contains these when it uses characters from the show in the same timeslot.
Sometimes it wasn't even a moral lesson, but a science fact related to the Sci-Fi setting. The first season of seaQuest DSV had real life ocean expert Robert Ballard from the Woods-Hole Oceanographic Institute give a one minute lecture on the science of the episode next to the credits; this segment vanished in the second season. Rankin/BassSci-Fi cartoon SilverHawks had something about the planets framed as a lesson to the crew's Plucky Comic Relief / Robot Monkey. A variant on this could be seen in the short segments in prime-time that recommended the viewer to consult his local library for selected books related to the preceding program.

Nintendo Power referenced this. They ran a shot in their preview of the new G.I. Joe video game of two members of the team getting ready to charge into battle, and underneath, the caption...

"The other half of the battle? A really big chain gun."

The GI Joe comic packs parodied these, with ads featuring kids in some sort of problematic situation and the Joes showing up to...tell them about their awesome new action figures.

G.I. Joe Extreme also had PSAs, and even used the "Knowing is half the battle" line too.

"I didn't know we had a ninja..."

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, rather impressively, makes this line a plot point briefly, as a reference to intelligence operations. It's also printed on a wall of the exercise room. Ripcord asks what the other half is, but no one answers.

Sailor Moon — the "Sailor Says" segments which were created solely for the DiC North American dub. Some of these took extremely vague lessons out of the material. As That Chick With The Goggles points out two good examples— "Today we saw buses vanish into thin air. If only we could make the smog that buses cause vanish into thin air, too! Even though we're just kids, we can carpool and make a difference." ...yeah. Another example given was that, although one episode actually had in it a lesson to believe in yourself and have confidence, because the episode was about an insecure artist who was afraid to draw what she really looked like because she didn't believe she looked good enough, the Sailor Says at the end of that episode was a reminder that Drugs Are Bad.

"Remember kids, exercising is hard, but shoving a spoon down your throat is easy! And don't forget to do it after every meal, just like me!"

The "science lessons" in Martian Successor Nadesico may have been partly meant to parody such tags in series imported from the US, as they are something rarely if ever seen in anime as it is broadcast in Japan.

GunBuster zigzags this, because, while it might be a parody like the above, relativistic time dilation also plays a major role in the plot of later episodes, so they had to explain it for the story to make sense.

An anime which plays this straight is Mari And Gali, which attempts to teach middle school students about scientific principles. Its makers still throw in a lot of slapstick and general silliness, so the result is rather strange—to say the least.

Nyan Koi! ends each episode with a segment called MewView, where the main character cats recap the episode in a humorous way, and then sign off with an "interesting fact" about cats.

Bartender ends each episode with a recipe for an alcoholic drink. The ending sequence also shows a bartender preparing said drink.

Used in one volume of the English edition of The Kindaichi Case Files talking about the differences between Western and Japanese computers. They also use it to justify the heavy edits by explaining that if they used a literal translation, the English reading audience won't get a fair chance at solving the mystery themselves.

Some of the Yumeiro P‚tissiŤre episodes end with cooking advice for making certain types of sweets.

The Mysterious Cities of Gold featured mini-documentaries on South American history and culture at the end of each episode. Unlike most entries on this list, they were actually interesting.

Dragon Ball had two non-canon episodes, "Goku's Traffic Safety" and "Goku's Fire Brigade". The characters learn about traffic safety and fire safety, then address the audience about it at the end.

Comic Books

One of DC Editor Jack Schiff's pet projects back in the Golden Age was a series of one-page PSA inserts featuring various popular superheroes teaching kids a brief lesson on the topic of the day; these were actually required by law, since in order to qualify as second-class mail, a publication had to have a certain amount of straight text.

DC Comics once commissioned a series of in-house PSAs in the early 90s featuring several DC heroes like Robin, Booster Gold, The Flash, among others getting informed about the real facts concerning HIV and AIDS. The most well known of the bunch was the adult-oriented Neil Gaiman and Dave Mckean authored Death Talks About Life, featuring Death of the Endless from The Sandman and John Constantine.

Marvel Comics have done some similar ads on health issues in the 2010s, including one where Tony (Iron Man) Stark - one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe - is apparently unaware that men can get breast cancer.

Scott Pilgrim: Free Scott Pilgrim◊ ends with "Scott Pilgrim Says", where we are taught never to hit a girl. Unless it is an emergency. And that's what Scott Pilgrim says!

Film

In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, after Bugs Bunny explains the art technique of Pointillism, he says: "I think, when you go to the movies, you should learn somethin'."

Toy Story 2 has an in-universe example where the last aired episode of Woody's Roundup had the show Woody address the audience about not forgetting their friends and family while singing the recurring song "You've Got a Friend in Me". This convinces the Woody watching, who had just decided to abandon his old friends and his owner Andy to go to a museum in Japan with the rest of the roundup gang toys, to reverse his decision and take the roundup gang with them.

In the 1997 informative video The Kids Guide To The Internet ends with the mother pointing out that the internet is not regulated and you should watch your children's internet usage. (Which, oddly enough, she did NOT do during the entire half-hour video.)

Live Action TV

Each major American network has their own version of these.

The most well-known and often parodied are NBC's "The More You Know Segments", which featured celebrities of the time in Public Service Announcements.

A special feature on The Office season 2 DVD had the show's characters tell you important facts about life. Dwight informs viewers that he could survive on a wolf's diet, Jim tells you that the black jelly beans are bad, and Ryan tells you, if you're hanging out with your friends, and someone tries to sell you a $9 beer, just say no, because $9 is way too much for a beer. The Officeairs on NBC.

The Daily Show parodies it with 'The Less You Know', a segment about censorship where the rainbow trail on the star logo is blacked out with redaction bars.

It also parodied it with 'The More You Wish You Didn't Know' on a segment concerning the ACORN scandals.

And then, with a series of increasingly poorly titled segments where Jon Stewart tries to speak directly to the younger audience: "This Has Been 'Jon Stewart Touches Kids'... wait, that's the name we're going with?"

One of J.D.'s fantasies in Scrubs (also on NBC) parodies this with J.D. telling the audience why it's wrong to smother your kids, in a horrifyingly casual manner:

JD: You had a tough day at the office. So you come home, make yourself some dinner, smother your kids, pop in a movie, maybe have a drink. It's fun, right? Wrong. Don't smother your kids.

It ends with NBC's logo and "The More You Know."

This Is the Life and virtually all of the now-disappeared religious anthology dramas that aired from the early 1950s through late 1980s. After the situation at hand reaches its resolution, an off-screen narrator (or sometimes, on-screen host, invariably a clergyman) will review a given situation, offer appropriate commentary and give a brief Scripture reading to recap the lesson of the day.

Indeed (through at least the early 2000s), many stations would offer a brief, pre-taped message from a clergyman from their broadcast area, usually an inspirational message or some other quick lesson on applying Christian values to daily life.

Double The Fist gives us Mephisto Knows. Mephisto tells us about something he doesn't like such as Athletes, Vegetarians, and Traffic Signs.

Barney: Hi there. We've had a lot of fun tonight, but on a more serious note, this is the time of year when we remember the importance of giving, and there's no greater gift... than the gift of booty. So, this holiday season, why not bang someone in need? I'm Barney Stinson, and that's (winks) one to grow on.

The camera then pans away to show that he's not addressing the audience, but a girl in the bar, and the music cuts out as she rejects him. He immediately turns to another girl and begins the speech again.

In the early seasons, all episodes of Power Rangers ended with "a message from the Power Rangers." Though not as frequent as before, Rangers doing a public service announcement or two has made a comeback (apparently, listening to your parents is as important factor in being a hero as far as the Overdrive Rangers are concerned... even though their Red Ranger became a Ranger by ignoring his father's prohibitions against his putting himself in danger that way).

Has happened at least twice in the FOX series 24. Most notably, a PSA was created in the fourth season where Kiefer Sutherland talked about the plight of Middle Eastern residents in the country, just before an episode where his character, Jack Bauer, met two Middle Eastern gun shop owners in Los Angeles. The pre-show announcements for season two and four also had Sutherland promoting corporate sponsors (i.e. Ford sponsored a commercial-free airing of the season two premiere).

Niea_7 featured a short live action "educational" segment after every show with bizarre statements about life in India.

In every episode of Gekisou Sentai Carranger after the next episode preview, one of the characters gives safety tips for pedestrians (of course, 'cause kids are still not legally entitled to drive).

Sometimes other characters do this, like Francia Raisa's character, Adrian.

Kamen Rider Kiva had this invoked at the beginning of every episode, thanks to Kivat.

"Minna, shiteru ka?" ("Everybody, did you know?")

The Clueless TV series once had one where the audience was earnestly told that the only safe sex is no sex.

An episode of the Rotten Tomatoes Show had a Three Word Review that described the movie Knowing as "Half the battle".

The 80s show Voyagers! always had star Meeno Peluce tell the viewers, during the closing credits, that if they wanted to learn more about the historical periods and/or people from the episode, they could visit their local library ("It's all in books!").

Attack of the Show! will occasionally mock this trope. When they teach the audience a "lesson," Kevin or Olivia will inform then that they "just got learned!". Cut to a parody of the shooting star made famous by NBC; only it's a rocketship flying over the Earth, and it crashes into a blimp, and the blimp hindenbergs back into the atmosphere.

Code Red episodes had a coda where a cast member give a fire safety or first aid lesson.

The Son Of The Beach show attempted to parody this. Unfortunately, the parodies weren't funny.

Eureka has a series of PSAs called ?Live Smart, Eureka? featured on the Season 2 DVD. They consist of reminding the really smart scientists that what they are doing could potentially be really dumb.

Police, Camera, Action! started doing from 2007 onwards at the end of the show. Even the episode Ultimate Pursuits had one, although that could be considered a parody of Back to the Future (with the accompanying theme music). It's rare to see such things on a documentary...

30 Rock. At the end of the episode Gavin Velure, Tracy's sex doll made a And Now You Know segment.

Tracy's Sex Doll: You know a lot of people look down on sex dolls. But as you saw tonight they save lives and bring families together. How am I such an expert? Iím Tracy Jordanís sex doll!

Spoofed by The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which ends every episode with a segment named "What Did We Learn on the Show Tonight, Craig?" right before the ending credits. Quite often, the segment contains no lesson whatsoever, and on the occasion it does have one, it's never a serious one. "Lessons" have included a Spanish vocabulary word and "The kitten in the ["What Did We Learn on the Show Tonight, Craig?"] graphic is a computer animation, not a video of a real kitten."

Craig Ferguson also parodies this trope and combines it with Biting-the-Hand Humor by frequently saying "CBS Cares" after giving some unhelpful advice. He sometimes combines this with a Spoof Aesop.

The Peoples Court does this at the end of each case, with host Harvey Levin giving some practical advice on how to avoid the mess the judge just cleaned up. Note: Since laws vary from state to state, he's not always right. Check your jurisdiction's rules to be sure. Indeed, in the original version, the producers explicitly advised this in a disclaimer shown at the end of each program.

"Read More About it" was a variation of this that aired frequently on CBS during The '80s, most notably following animated specials, Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, and a few movies that were Based on a True Story. The segments started off with a TV turning into the pages of a book. These featured the star from the movie or a character voiceover from the animated specials encouraging viewers to learn more about the show's topic by visiting their local library or bookstore along with a list of recommended books selected by the Library of Congress.

In Bill Nye the Science Guy, there were often segments which started with a voice saying "Did you know that...?", followed by a science fact. The segment would then end with the voice saying "Now you know!"

Will:(Turning directly to the camera, speaking softly) lf you'd like to learn more about poetry, you can reach us at... Psych! We just kidding! Good night, y'all!

Key And Peele has a parody PSA featuring Mr T teaching kids about respect... but ignores everything the kids bring up (like racism, sexism, drugs, or alcohol) until something comes up that he cares about (like names, dress, and especially hairstyles. Towards the end, the kids are actively trying to get him to come back by saying they're going to run off and "do a bunch of drugs" ("Yum! That sounds good.") but he instantly appears when they mention hair.

Music

The Z-Trip, MURS and Supernatural song "Breakfast Club", being a love letter to Saturday morning cartoons, parodies several of these. "Even in cartoons, Americana can't be tackled, but at least you know now, And Knowing Is Half The Battle", "let a ho be a ho, and that's one to grow on", and such.

Radio

This trope is Older than You Think, as some old-time radio dramas did the same thing. The Shadow, for one, sometimes offered in-character advice on how to properly operate and maintain a coal-burning furnace after an episode was over. This rather shamelessly combined this with Product Placement, as the program's sponsor was a coal company.

Tabletop Games

The tabletop RPG Cartoon Action Hour is designed to evoke the feel of action cartoons from the 1980s. In fact, players can earn bonus experience points by role-playing their characters in an After-The-Show Message.

Theater

The epilogue of Pericles can be roughly summarized as "Look at all these characters! The gods punished the wicked ones and rewarded the righteous ones!"

Most plays written in the 18th century had prologues that basically said, "this is a good play, you'll enjoy it" and epilogues repeating the moral of the play. Probably justified, since few people at the time actually went to the theater to watch a play - they went to see and be seen.

Many arcade game distributed in North America from 1989 through 1999 featured a screen during their attract modes that showed a quote from then-FBI director William S. Sessions proclaiming "winners don't use drugs." Many games from 1992 also featured a similar message from EPA administrator William K. Reilly telling players "Recycle It, Don't Trash It!"

Parodied in passing conversation in City of Heroes, where a Resistance Informant ventures the opinion that Knowing is overrated in terms of battle.

Mother 3 has a few signs in certain locations that provide the player with real-world information based on the context, such as about certain types of frog that can survive in desert climates, or why mole tunnels can be so long and complex (the latter even encouraging the player to take time out to go watch moles in action some day).

When drinking in Catherine, a disembodied voice will interrupt you to tell you about some random trivia about the drink you chose.

Parodied by Legendary Frog, who had a transforming toaster warn Kerrigan about the dangers of electric shock. Legendary Frog also gave us "The Matrix Still Has You," in which inadvertent phasing by The Twins leads to a car accident, and Neo gives us a lecture on seatbelts.

And parodied again in An Important Rap Song, where Crack Stuntman (voice of Gunhaver on the Cheat Commandos) does a corny rap song about not playing with too many (some are alright, then?) knives (and spring break, for some reason).

Joel and Phil appear together in a parody of one in thisBonus Stage episode. While Phil delivers a message about Bonus Stage not encouraging illegal downloading, Joel delivers the opposite message, explicitly telling the viewers to "steal".

Webcomics

Parodied in this PVP comic that suggests what "the other half of the battle" is.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids would invariably end their episodes with a musical performance by Albert and the gang, that would spell out the lesson of the day. They, along with Bill Cosby's narrative asides, tended to make the lessons go down more smoothly than a lot of 70s cartoons did.

"This is Bill Cosby comin' at you with music and fun, and if you're not careful you may learn something before we're done. So let's get ready, okay? Hey, Hey, Hey!"

The New Adventures of Zorro (the 1981 version) featured the title character giving an epilogue each episode about Spanish-American history (focused on California).

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) plus its Spin-OffShe Ra Princess Of Power. It was halfway-used in one episode of the 2002 version, where the Masters needed Orko to help lure a colony of dragons to attack monsters under the control of Skeletor. After that task was successful, the episode concludes with Orko admitting to his chagrin that he's still scared of the species, but the heroes reassure him that a proper respect for a fierce and powerful creature is the mark of a wise person. Here, the lesson flows relatively naturally from the plot and the fourth wall is kept intact.

The 2002 series did have morals, following in the format of the original series, but they didn't air with the American episodes; only the international releases. However, they do come on the DVD sets for the curious viewer. They also tend to softened the blow by always making it the exact lesson the episode as a whole was meant to teach you, rather than clumsily segueing into "yo, kids ó don't smoke."

Bravestarr, as with most Filmation shows. Unusually, there is at least one episode where a villain gets to deliver the message, with Outlaw Scuzz talking about how bad smoking is for one's health, and how he wishes he could quit but he's addicted.

The Lone Ranger had he or Tonto give a small note about the history of the American West at the end of each episode.

Super Friends - safety tips, magic tricks, science projects, you name it. Probably set the tone for all the others.

Superman: The Animated Series once put this trope to an interesting use for the opening of one of its episodes: it starts with a setup that might have come out of one of these PSAs from an old Silver Age animated series with Superman flying in to rescue a kid whose friends have goaded him into endangering himself and giving the kids a little lecture on not giving in to peer pressure before flying away. Our first hint that something's out of place is that, right after he leaves, one of the less admiring kids mocks him for being such a stiff. Sure enough, it turns out this is actually the first appearance of Bizarro, an imperfect clone Lex Luthor made using a bit of Superman's blood. The reason he comes off sounding so pompous is that he thinks he's Superman and is trying too hard to do what he thinks Superman typically does. In case we missed the hint, his next good deed for the day is rescuing Clark Kent and Lois Lane from a car crash, thereby alerting Superman to this odd twist of events as well.

Batman: The Animated Series did a very Batman way of teaching kids not to be reckless, by having him scold two kids for playing chicken on train, saying, "You play chicken long enough, you fry."

Several PSA segments were prepared for Transformers Generation 1, another Hasbro property produced by Sunbow and Marvel Productions concurrent with G.I. Joe. The segments even used the "and knowing is half the battle" line (and the scripts from the G.I. Joe PSAs almost verbatim), but they never aired. These were placed as unlockable bonuses in the Armada-based PS2 game, and are also available on some DVD releases of the show. The most hypocritical one had an anti-sexism message, at a time when there were no female Transformers, and came from Powerglide, who had an episode that season where a human woman fell in love with him (presumably, the PSA would have aired after that episode...).

Parodied in an episode of Robot Chicken where Optimus Prime talks about prostate cancer.

Jem, another Hasbro property produced by Sunbow and Marvel Productions (like G.I. Joe' and Transformers) also featured similar PSA segments. Like the Transformers ones, these also mimicked the G.I. Joe versions, sometimes word-for-word, but the "Knowing is half the battle" line was replaced with "Doing the right thing makes you a Super Star".

Played completely straight in M.A.S.K., where every episode ends with a tag scene with a moral. Occasionally these are related to the events or setting of the episode, mostly they're completely random segments, often involving T-Bob doing something stupid and dangerous with dire consequences (two separate segments involve him diving into water that turns out to be shallow). They get even weirder in the second season, often featuring characters who don't appear anywhere else in the episode and involving members of terrorist group VENOM relaxing in a suburban sitting room before delivering a lecture on what to do in an earthquake. They were cut from many if not all UK broadcasts and VHS releases.

Granted, the entire point of the episode is to teach the lesson that's recapped at the end, so it's more of a natural flow. Plus, it helps the younger kids with short attention spans remember why they were watching the story in the first place.

Clerks: The Animated Series parodied this with a number of post-episode shorts, such as having Jay and Silent Bob present a Mr Wizard inspired magic-from-science segment. They showed a simple sleight-of-hand trick, with the twist that a key element of the trick required invoking the power of Satan.

Making it better, the third segment didn't do much but have Charles Barkley try to do the segment, then Jay and Silent Bob kick the crap out of him Godfather-style (including the missed punch) and leave.

Spoofed in an episode of Disney's Dave the Barbarian. "Remember, children, brush your teeth every night or evil tooth decay goblins will move into your mouth and play loud polka music all day! And remember, STAY IN SCHOOL!!"

In the 13th season premier, Kyle and Cartman actually quoted the phrase verbatim after Kenny's death from syphilis, caught by getting oral sex from his girlfriend.

Care Bears, usually a lesson about sharing or not lying, or how bad it is to shoplift, etc.

This was used in The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series (but not the one that aired on Saturday mornings) with a short 'Sonic Sez' segment every episode, where Sonic explained some sort of lesson (often safety related) to the viewers. Disturbingly, Sonic once took it upon himself to explain "good touch vs. bad touch" to the kids at home ("There's nothing more cool than being hugged by someone you like. But if someone tries to touch you in a place or in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's no good!"). The Internet being what it is, this has spawned various edits and parodies, such as "Sonic Gives MC Hammer Advice", which is the "touch" speech with parts of "Can't Touch This" edited in.

Bart: Contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: the American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy. If you'd like to learn more about war, there's lots of books in your local library, many of them with cool gory pictures.

A later episode, "Bart Starr", had guest star Joe Namath break the fourth wall to deliver an inspiring message.

Namath: Heh heh. Poor Bart. You know, we had a lot of fun tonight. But, there's nothing funny about... vapor lock. It's the third most common cause of stalling. So please, take care of your car and get it checked. I'm Joe Namath. Good night!

The Magic School Bus had a segment at the end of each episode responding to "viewers' phone calls", which explained all the things the episode had glossed over because it made a better story. Fair enough, since it was intended as an Edutainment Show.

The books did this too, ending with a couple pages that addressed complaints about inaccuracies and safety/physics violations.

Thunder Cats more or less averted this by not having end of episode segments where the cast breaks the fourth wall and talks straight to the viewer, but some of the morals the episodes themselves are trying to teach come over as obvious anyway. This is sometimes pushed a bit too far when one of the ThunderCats practically spells out the moral in a piece of dialogue in a very anvilicious way, such as one time when Tigra makes a small speech about how "Rules are only meaningful if people agree to follow them. Otherwise, they're just words". In retrospect, it's strangely ambiguous. It sounds like a worthy and moralistic exhortation to follow the rules, but could equally be taken as saying that rules have no meaning if you don't agree with them, or could even be a veiled attack on rules that have no mechanism for enforcement (it was in response to a comment that the "Interstellar Council" ruled against a weapon that the mutants were using).

SilverHawks had a similar segment at the end of each episode where Copper Kid got in a space simulator, where he was put against a simple astronomy quiz, usually by Bluegrass. Given the nature of the show, it was actually quite appropriate to have a segment about astronomy at the end of the show. Which was a bit odd, given that interstellar space was depicted as containing breathable air and Earth-normal gravity throughout the show proper. In fact everything about that universe was divorced from our own laws of physics. This was a world where banging a tuning fork in space created wind and ice.

Centurions — Same as above, except lecture style. Even Big Bad Doc Terror got to do two; one about "machines" (episode 14) and other about "computers".

Spoofed in an Ambiguously Gay Duo animated short, from Saturday Night Live, in which the Duo present unintentionally Double Entendre-filled home safety tips. ("Grab the plug firmly by the male end and shove it right in. Don't play with it.")

As long as we're on the topic of SNL...

Mr T: "If you believe in yourself, eat all your school, stay in milk, drink your teeth, don't do sleep, and get 8 hours of drugs - you can get work!"

The otherwise obscure Back to the Future The Animated Series was mostly remembered for that funny guy at the end — a young Bill Nye doing a science-related stunt, usually a do-it-yourself, at the end, sometimes related to the episode's events.

Mighty Max had a segment at the end of each episode with Max giving a brief fact related to the subject of the episode. One two-part finale, with Max still out with Virgil and Norman in a hellish setting, had Max's mother remarking on her son's choice of Dante's Inferno as reading material.note When the series was shown in the UK, they were cut from BBC1's screenings but left intact on Nickelodeon.

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy parodies this in one episode. Erwin steals Grim's scythe and causes a lot of chaos with it. From their beaten up positions, two characters say to the audience "Remember kids, playing with scythes isn't cool or fun." "It's dangerous!" "So if you see a scythe, don't pick it up! Tell an adult immediately!" ...they then proceed to nod at the camera knowingly.

The Venture Bros. included a Very Special Episode about testicular torsion - an obscure and embarrassing medical problem to which Dean succumbed. The after-credits segment included the Animated Actors woodenly giving awareness lectures while reading off cue cards, in a very 'The More You Know' style.

At the end of a Sweet Polly Oliver episode, the Token Girl explained to the viewer that women being restricted from playing on the same soccer team as men was "a stupid rule" but also that rules are rules.

Amanda Carey (a.k.a. the Token Girl) is usually the one to explain the episode's lesson (there's at least one lesson for each episode). One notable exception was "Football Fugitives" where it was justified by the fact she wasn't involved in the episode's main plot. Surprisingly enough, she did explain the moral of an episode where she made no appearance at all other than the All Just a Dream episode "The Relegator". Napper explained the moral of another episode where it was left ambiguous if he dreamt the whole thing or not.

The episode "The Son Also Draws", (featuring an Indian casino) ends with the family stereotyping certain nationalities and people. Immediately, they explain why the stereotype is incorrect, with "The More You Know" logo showing up above them. When it is Peter's turn:

Peter: That's more than you can say for those freeloadin' Canadians. (pause while the background goes black for him to give his inspirational educational message) ...''Canada sucks!''

In "North by North Quahog", Chris is caught with liquor in the boy's bathroom and Flint, voiced by his original actor, Bill Ratner, steps outta the stall and gives a lecture about drinking.

At the end of "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington", an episode about smoking, Peter is lounging in his chair and starts "Hi, Iím Peter Grifin. You know weíve had a lot of laughs tonight, but Iíll tell you whatís not funny; killing strippers. Strippers are people too, naked people who may be willing to pleasure you for a price you negotiate later behind a curtain in the VIP room. Besides, thereís no need to kill them Ďcause most of them are already dead inside."

And then of course, there's Gary The No-Trash Cougar, who holds children at gunpoint for littering.

Parodied via G.I. Jose. The Mexican-like version of G.I. Joe would tell kids to not do crazy stuff that G.I. Joe wouldn't talk about (no, not drugs) and would offer children to take some stuff out of his trinket. It even has a (Mexican) chorus!

G.I. JOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Growing Up Creepie, about a gothy girl raised by creepie-crawlies, included short inserts with educational insect facts.

The Popeye and Olive Show had various safety messages, usually featuring Popeye's identical quintuplet nephews, between the shorts.

Popeye: Did you boys wash your hands?

Nephews: No, but they're clean.

Then Popeye goes on to explain how millions of tiny germs, too small to be seen, are on their hands, so they need to wash them.

Libertys Kids, a public-broadcasting educational series set during the American Revolution, initially included pieces of bogus news, reported by Benjamin Franklin, in the middle of each program. These interludes, intended to teach (very) young viewers about life in the 18th century, were cut from non-PBS broadcasts to make room for commercial breaks. The format was an Actor Allusion, as Franklin was voiced by Walter Cronkite.

Viewers of Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic were taught a magic trick at the end of the episode by the real Princess Tenko, along with an occasional "The magic is in you!" message.

King of the Hill often acknowledged social issues, but these were only used a couple of times. One was encouraging viewers to vote, another was about working to get Antonio Lůpez de Santa Anna's leg returned to Mexico.

In the episode, "Keeping Up With Our Joneses" (where the entire family, sans Luanne, gets addicted to cigarettes), Boomhauer gave a lecture on the effects of smoking on your lungs, comparing a dirty air filter to a clean one, before being led away by a random woman, during the end credits.

Dexter's Laboratory has an endcap showing Dexter reminding DeeDee not to run with scissors, then addresses the audience by reminding all that running with sharp objects is dangerous...unless you have scissors-proof running equipment.

This takes the form of the letters that Twilight Sparkle writes to her mentor Princess Celestia at the end of every episode. Unlike others, this is implemented into the plot instead of a random PSA disconnected to the events of the episode; Twilight is officially tasked by Celestia with studying the Power of Friendship and reports her findings in the form of aesops.

In Part 2 of "The Return of Harmony", these letters (sent back by Celestia) gave her the resolve she needed to rescue her friends, power up the Elements of Harmony, and defeat Discord when all hope seemed lost. Even more impressive, she turns the aesop of that episode into an epic"World of Cardboard" Speech against him.

Interestingly, Season 1 of My Little Pony has the EI rating, while season 2 does not. The production team apparently decided this change of rules was awesome, and thus made "Lesson Zero": Twilight is unable to learn a new lesson about friendship and goes nuts with fear. At the end of the episode, Princess Celestia tells Twilight she only has to write letters when she feels she has learned something, effectively freeing this from being mandatory and expanded the responsibility to include the others element bearers. Since then a 'Twilight writes a letter' scene has been rare but the general form remains more or less constant.

This is given a hilarious subversion in one episode, where Applejack writes a letter just to brag that she already knew the Aesop.

The format has changed as of Season 4, wherein the ponies have now decided that they'll keep diaries to record Aesops instead.

Every episode of Rescue Heroes would end with the characters recapping the lessons learned earlier in the episode. These typically were reduced to restating the emergency situation of the episode, telling you how it should be dealt with, and ending with the annoyingly cheesy phrase, "Think like a Rescue Hero. Think safe."

Occasionally parodied in the Sam & Max Animated Series, in their "Our Bewildering Universe" shorts. A great example is "Chock Full O'Guts", a short as unnecessarily gory as network standards would allow a kid's show to be, in which they claim to be teaching the viewer about the body, but instead play a heart like a bagpipe, throw intestines around and explain that the pancreas's function is to be a paperweight.

Zula Patrol: Every episode ends in a recap of what they (being audience and Protagonists) learned.

Every Invisible Network of Kids episode ends with the 'Science Club' segment where Cosmo Soper discusses the scientific or historic basis for something that had been the theme of that episode; like amnesia, or chess.

Davey's father in Davey and Goliath got this duty, recapping the lesson of the day by talking with Davey (and sometimes others) about it. Mountain Dew even produced a commercial that parodied this practice (and subverts this trope in the process).

At the end of each episode of Inspector Gadget, Gadget, Penny and Brain would teach the kids a safety tip (usually at least tangentially related to the episode's story) like "exercise is good for you" or "always wear a seatbelt".

Scaredy: I think what we've learned today is that rumors can get out of hand. Dave: What? We didn't learn that! The Lady Thugs were just as bad as the rumors said! Scaredy: Read the script!

The hour-long version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 on CBS featured "Turtle Tips" segments that would be featured in between the first and second episode played, featuring environmental messages like "make sure to recycle" and "keep our oceans clean."

The Plastic Man Adventure Hour, had kids' consumer advice such as the wisdom of shopping around or going to the library for a book instead of buying it.

The Disney Junior short series Nina Needs To Go! always ends with Nina telling the audience "That will never happen again, because now I know-don't wait to go!"

Real Life

Frequently applied by teachers. Sometimes, the teacher will wrap up the school day by recapping a lesson from the day, or give information that could affect the students the next day (e.g., "Don't forget the permission slips for the field trips. If they're not signed, you don't get to go to the zoo.").

Many small-town newspapers still have columns where local clergymen — usually on a rotating basis — will provide insight on issues affecting Christians, or perhaps the community at large, along with the requisite Scripture.

You know, we've had a lot of fun today. But you know what's not fun? Red Links. G'night!

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